Halloween Party Preparations

I drove around in the rain and horrendous traffic tonight doing my food shopping for our party so I don't have to deal with it Saturday. We're still cleaning house (dusting, uggh!), still doing a bit of decorating (got lots of orange mini lights this year, looks awesome and will look great in the photos). This is our 11th consecutive Halloween party and everyones food tastes have changed drastically over the years (are we all getting old or what?). Our main party staples used to be lots of chocolate, Halloween candy like Indian Corn (tastes better than candy corn), Velveeta and rotelle dip (nightmare to clean up and takes about 3 hours to melt in a crock pot), chips and more chips.

Somehow we've evolved to things like fruit and cheese, crackers and carrots. Our music has evolved also, from just Halloween staples (Monster Mash, anything vaguely Halloween sounding), then to 80's dance stuff (my choice :-), and lately to a combination of alternative stuff, dance, acid jazz, and a few spooky Halloween picks thrown in. I've spent the night listening to hours of my own CD's and downloaded dance mixes, etc. trying to mentally pick through it all. I've always obsessed like crazy over picking just the right music, though a lot of times I'm not sure anyone is even listening. Having a CD burner takes some of the stress off of me (recording 5+ hours of music can be a pain, I used to even have a mixer and mixed the stuff!)...

The last few years I've gone through and grabbed all of my favorites off of my tons of CD's and compiled them onto just a few to save time. Then each year I add some new stuff for variety and rearrange the stuff I already have.

MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS:

For general eerie haunted house background, check out any of Midnight Syndicates CD's, Vampyre is their newest. You could just let it play over and over, or add the others for an evening of creepy music.

80's are always good, especially for dancing, snag "Best Of's" if you don't own too much original stuff. Good groups - Missing Persons, Flock of Seagulls, Book of Love, Devo, The Cars, Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, Nena, early B-52's, David Bowie.

For sophisticated crowds, for more talking than dancing, check out the Ultra Chilled compilations, cool acid jazz with a beat. Also Massive Attack, Delerium, Supreme Beings of Leisure, Mono.

For a Goth party, the compilation This Is Goth is good. Groups like Switchblade Symphony, This Ascension, Mira, Shroud. Portishead is a spooky non-Goth addition.

Good general purpose party music: Garbage (Beautiful Garbage excellent), Bif Naked, Sinead O'Connor, Poe's Haunted, the Snealker Pimps, Dido, the Breeders (Last Splash is still the best), the B-52s's Cosmis Thing is a party on a CD, a little Alice Cooper (Nightmare of From the Inside) add a little spookiness, as does Siouxsie.

FOOD FOR ADULTS (easy to serve stuff, feeds about 30 people):

Green or red grapes, with bags of already cubed cheeses
Baby carrots (already peeled and washed in the bag) and a veggie dip
Popcorn (buy it pre-cooked if you don't want to smell it all night)
Flavored chips that don't require dip are easy
Crackers and dip (I got Wheat Thins and some of that Brummel & Brummel fruit spread)
Got to have a couple of bags of Halloween colored M&M's
One or two more bags of miniature candies (stick with chocolate, Snicker's, Reese's, give the leftovers to the trick-or-treaters)
We tell our friends this is a BYOB party, but we get a couple of liters of Coke and Diet Coke, plus a bag of ice for everyone.
Plastic cups, plates and spooky paper napkins for easy cleanup.

Posted by Morticia at October 25, 2002 04:49 AM | TrackBack